Tornado Dreams, Early Morning Sunday the 16th

Being as passionate* about weather as I am, the elements often pervade my dreams. The tornado, an iconic manifestation of my passion*, is most often present in my dreams. Usually, these dreams involve an inability to experience of photograph such an event. I am always aware of the situation, but sometimes I am paralyzed or only able to move and react extremely slowly. Sometimes, my equipment fails ... cameras ... cell phones ... vehicles, etc.

This dream was different. This dream was awesome.

Here is the context of the dream. Remember, it was a dream, and not everything always makes sense in dreams:

I was on the north side of the Denver-Metro area, looking east. A familiar looking storm dominated the landscape. It was my Alta Vista storm; my first tornado. I was looking at it from a different point of view however. On the original storm, we were in position to the southeast of the updraft as the storm moved due south. This time, I was to the west, looking at it to the east.

Suddenly, we were storm chasing. There were four of us in a vehicle, and I was in the passenger's side back seat. We drove around the storm to the north and passed under the meager low-precip core, now directly to the east of the updraft. The storm became tornadic quickly, with multiple vortexes dancing on the ground. I wasn't videoing, I was taking stills. Suddenly, my batteries ran out ... a common occurrence in such dreams. Luckily, I easily replaced them with a couple of double A's. (My batteries did run out while filming my first tornado.) The sky behind the tornado (to the west) seemed yellow and the tornado was black. The multiple vortexes seemed to be animated spirits, dancing along the ground and taking strange shapes.

I woke up at this point but fell back asleep a couple of times this morning, each time going back to dreamland. It was strange that my other dreams, which did not have tornadoes, had the same storm ... usually in a later stage, at one point with an "Independence Day"-style updraft and the other in dissipation, it was strange that the same storm carried over. I remember the second dream really well, but it was more personal. The third, I don't remember at all, but I remember the storm finally dying out.


It was nice to dream about tornadoes and not waking up frustrated. Not because of the weather, anyway.

Dann.

*For Storm Track members, see Roger Jensen thread.